"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

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“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Always Reaching Out!

“There are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” [Sen. Ted] Cruz told Zuckerberg during a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees.

“There have been numerous instances with Facebook,” he continued, before listing a few, starting with a 2016 Gizmodo report that former Facebook employees claimed the website’s “trending” sidebar had suppressed conservative-leaning stories.

“In addition to that,” Cruz continued, “Facebook has initially shut down the Chick-fil-A appreciation day page, has blocked a post of a Fox News reporter, has blocked over two dozen Catholic pages and most recently blocked Trump supporters Diamond and Silk’s page, with 1.2 million Facebook followers, after determining their content and brand were, quote, ‘unsafe to the community.’ To a great many Americans that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias.”

Does Ted Cruz think the Congress can do something about this? If so, can we shut down FoxNews, too? There certainly "appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias" there, too. (And yes, he did confuse Facebook with You Tube, which did block Diamond and Silk (Facebook did not); but hey, Millennials won't notice, right?)

1 Comments:

As I recall there's a Supreme Court ruling from the 80s or 90s that float the idea that cable can be regulated when it becomes a big enough entity, as if it hadn't by then. Given its role in producing political disaster, what should be considered treason and other crimes against democracy, if such media isn't regulated or at least subject to people it libels being able to sue it democracy is doomed.